BAGHDAD — The culmination of the long, harder-than-expected battle to drive Islamic State from Iraq is at hand.

Following weeks of steady but bloody progress, Iraqi government forces announced Thursday that they were close to recapturing the landmark Nuri mosque in Mosul, a hugely symbolic victory retaking the holy site where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only known public appearance in 2014 and from which he declared the establishment of a radical Islamic “caliphate.”

Ashley Ness was tracking down smugglers in the South African countryside earlier this year when she came upon an unexpected sight — hundreds of donkey hides hanging on tree branches.

The hides were on a homestead rented out to Chinese immigrants, said Ness, an inspector with Highveld Horse Care, a nonprofit animal rights group. Tractors, shipping containers and other detritus littered the property. Inside one of the containers, Ness and police officers found at least 3,000 donkey skins stacked.

CAIRO — Pope Francis is long gone from Egypt, but his April trip intensified a growing unease among Coptic Christians about President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s embrace of their 10 million-strong community.

During the pontiff’s visit, Mr. el-Sissi told Francis that the Egyptian government “is committed to treating all nationals equally on grounds of citizenship and constitutional and legal rights.”

HEBRON—Mohammad Ahmed studied accounting at al-Quds Open University in Hebron. He graduated with 3.7 out of 4.0 grade point average. But he’s never worked as an accountant.

“Two years after finishing my bachelor’s degree in accounting, I worked in a small furniture factory to earn money,” said Ahmed. “If I depended on my degree, I wouldn’t have a job in the next five years.”

A campaign to restore the holdings of the library of the University of Mosul has received an enthusiastic response since it began three months ago. Professors, students and private donors inside and outside Iraq are contributing books and other materials even before government military action to reclaim the city from Da’esh (Islamic State) has ended.

Islamic State seized the library when it captured Mosul in June of 2014, and made a show of destroying its books and manuscripts.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The deliberate release of a video showing Palestinian politician Marwan Barghouti eating cookies and a candy bar in his cell while supposedly leading a hunger strike against conditions in Israeli prisons has widened divisions as the 50-year anniversary of the Six-Day War approaches.

Israelis say the video highlights the duplicity of a terrorist. Palestinians are convinced that the leaked footage is either a setup or “fake news” about a charismatic leader whom many Palestinians view as a potential replacement for Mahmoud Abbas, the 82-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority.

The 18-year-old has not attended school since January, when teachers walked off the job to protest the central government’s treatment of Anglophone Cameroonians in the largely French-speaking West African country. He’s missed so many classes, he couldn’t pass national exams anyway.

CAN ECONOMIC growth ever paper over hate and grievous bloodshed? Rwanda’s survival depends on that possibility. More than two decades ago, this small East African country witnessed one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century: Extremist ethnic Hutus murdered more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, often by hacking them to death with machetes.

Now, the country is remarketing itself as the region’s economic miracle — the Singapore of Africa, the hotbed of a burgeoning services industry, a forward-looking country boldly pushing toward a cashless economy through financial technology.

CAIRO — Syrian opponents of President Bashar Assad cheered the U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian regime airbase Friday, saying it's about time the United States responded to the Syrian strongman's brutality.

"Hitting regime targets which have been used to launch attacks against Syrian civilians for six years is welcome news," said Issam Elrayaes, 41, a captain in the Free Syrian Army, one of many rebel groups waging a civil war against Assad's rule.

In the bustling border town of Peshawar, Pakistan, the lines form early these days at this government office that processes residence permits. That's because Afghan refugees now live in constant fear of officials separating them from their loved ones or deporting them to their war-torn native country that many no longer consider home.

“The government of Pakistan has already deported my husband and my eldest son to Afghanistan,” said Afghan refugee Laiba Zeb, 27, who waited in line for hours at the registration office with her other remaining children.

PARIS — A bloody day in the heart of the City of Light left some of France’s best-known journalists dead and police tracking down the native Islamist terrorists suspected of carrying out the murders to avenge what they said were insults to the founder of their faith. One suspect surrendered and two others were missing.

The well-coordinated early-morning attack on the editorial offices of the Charlie Hebdo targeted the editor of the bitingly satiric weekly, Stephane Charbonnier, nine colleagues and a security guard, all murdered in cold blood by masked assailants who reportedly called out the names of their victims as they were shot.Read more at PRI

AL-KOSHEH, Egypt (RNS) For decades, merchant Refaat El-Sayeh, a Coptic Christian, wanted to see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and visit the Church of the Nativity in nearby Bethlehem. But mostly, he wanted to feel closer to God.

For years, those pilgrimages for Egypt’s Coptic Christians, like El-Sayeh, were discouraged.

CAIRO — Bombs rained down on the Al-Waer neighborhood in western Homs in Syria six times one recent day. As they fell, Abu Mahmoud remembered how his 13-year-old son, Mahmoud, and brother-in-law, Hotheifah, 22, died in a similar barrage.

"I was next to them in the house," said Mahmoud, 35, a farmer. "They didn’t have time to run away."

BENGHAZI, Libya — Gunshots didn’t distract Nizar Al-Magrebi from the book he was reading in a cafe. The teenager was determined to better himself.

“The war made it clear to me how important it is to study hard to have a better life,” said Mr. Al-Magrebi, 18, who dreams of becoming an aeronautical engineer. “Cousins of mine died fighting the terrorists. I cannot give up. I should build a peaceful future in their tribute.”

CAIRO — With a population of 6 million and historically the most prosperous of the seven majority-Muslim nations on President Trump’s contentious executive order curbing travel and refugee flows, oil-rich Libya stands out as the smallest and the wealthiest country in the group.

But after three years of civil war that left an opening for penetration by Islamic State terrorists and with rival governments in its eastern and western sectors — neither with full control of state agencies or the country’s borders — some Libyan leaders say they can readily understand what drove the new U.S. president to hit the pause button.

Refused entry under the provisions of President Donald Trump’s executive order Friday restricting travel to the US for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, Hameed has been staying up late at night in a Baghdad apartment watching cable news.

He's been looking for a sign that he'll be able to travel to the US after the Pentagon submits a new list of Iraqis who translated for and fought with the Americans after the 2003 invasion. On Sunday, an officer from the Department of Homeland Security refused passage to Hameed and his pregnant wife as they were about to board a Qatar Airways flight to Atlanta, where his sister Nour already lives with her two children.

IKSAL, Israel — In this Galilean village three miles south of Nazareth, the muezzins’ chants from atop three mosques are as much a part of the landscape as the olive groves that ring the town.

“It’s not a noise,” said Mohammad Darawshe, a 53-year-old Iksal resident who lives about 500 yards from the city’s largest mosque, a poured concrete structure whose domed, blue-tile top serves as the village’s dominating landmark. “It’s been part of the scene here for 1,400 years.”

CAIRO—Ain Shams University administrators and others will no longer ask students about their religious affiliations on academic forms, a move that follows last year’s policy change by crosstown rival Cairo University.

The reforms at Egypt’s two largest public universities reflect a push toward non-sectarianism in higher education as Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi cracks down on Islamists throughout Egyptian institutions. In addition, the country’s minority Christian community continues to complain of discrimination in academia, and Christians are on edge after 28 church members were killed in a suicide bombing at a church mass in December.

BAGHDAD - Karam Hassawy has Mosul on his mind. For two years in enforced exile in Turkey, he has frequently thought about every street, every smell and every sound of the place he calls home. He hopes against hope that everything will be the same when he returns.

"I have not forgotten Mosul - since the moment I left the city, I wander in its streets and alleys every day in my mind," Hassawy, 25, told Al Jazeera. "Whenever I feel nostalgic, I go for a walk in its old alleys and smell the famous Mosul food that I have not tasted for more than two years.